What Is Conversational Commerce & Why You Should Care

Consumer expectations of speed and convenience have spurred new innovations that are opening up a seamless communication, called conversational commerce (cCommerce), between brands and customers.

Here’s a look at what conversational commerce is, why brands should care, and some examples of how brands are taking customer convenience to the next level.

What Is Conversational Commerce?

The term “conversational commerce” (or cCommerce) first surfaced back in 2015 when Chris Messina of Uber published a short piece on Medium about breakthroughs in adding a conversational element to the customer experience.

In that article, Messina defined conversational commerce as: “delivering convenience, personalization, and decision support while people are on the go, with only partial attention to spare.”

Many brands have adopted Twitter as a medium of customer support. Source:HubSpot

More than likely, you’ve participated or seen this concept in practice already: brands interacting with customers via chatbots on their website, adopting Twitter as a (public) customer service channel, or even smart voice devices that have now made their way into our phones, homes, and even cars.

For these reasons, brands that invest in making customer support as fast and authentic as possible are going to set themselves apart from those that continue to rely on slow and archaic mediums of communicating with customers.

WhatsApp and WeChat have also released business pages and bots of their own — showing that conversational commerce is on the rise abroad. Source: BBC

Dirty Lemon’s Conversational Success

One of the most innovative realizations of conversational commerce we’ve seen so far is with DIRTY LEMON: a digitally-native wellness beverage brand founded in 2015 that has sold over two million bottles, attracted an army of celebrity influencers and venture capitalists, and is now reportedly in talks with Coca-Cola.

Since its founding, the brand has relied entirely on a text message system for both transacting and customer support.

The Final Takeaway

Long gone are the days where customers were satisfied with dialing 1-800 or having to compose an email for customer experience.

Businesses that invest in making communication as easy and painless as possible are going to delight customers.

Whether that’s a chatbot on Messenger, a dedicated response team on Twitter, or accepting orders via text message — consumers will choose brands that go the extra mile to making the customer experience personalized and efficient.

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About the AuthorGreg graduated from CSU Sacramento with a degree in International Relations. After teaching English in Istanbul, he returned to California to pursue writing about tech and digital marketing. See all posts by this author here.

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